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What Is an Altcoin

An altcoin is any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin: thousands exist, some with their own network and some as tokens on another's, and a broker lists a handful of the largest as CFDs. This paper shows what the word covers and does not, the difference between a coin and a token, how the same coin is priced in dollars and in bitcoin, and what to read in an altcoin's Specification, contract size first. After reading it you can tell a coin from a token, convert an altcoin's dollar price to its bitcoin price, and read what a lot of it is at your broker.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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An altcoin, in five lines

An altcoin is short for alternative coin: every cryptocurrency other than bitcoin. Thousands exist, and a broker lists a handful of the largest as CFDs in its Crypto folder. There are two kinds, a coin that has its own network and a token that lives on somebody else's. An altcoin is priced in dollars on a platform and in bitcoin on many coin exchanges: a coin at 150.00 dollars is 0.0019 bitcoin at the real 25 August 2026 quote of 78,950.63. The word says what a coin is not, and nothing about what it is. The altcoin prices in this paper are examples, since this library holds no altcoin bars.

One big coin and many small ones

Picture one big coin and many small ones. Bitcoin is the first coin and the largest, and the word altcoin was coined for everything that came after it, so the big coin defines the category. Some altcoins are large networks in their own right, ether among them. Most are small, and many are gone within a few years. The second-largest coin and a coin nobody has heard of share the word; it is a category, not a rank, and it says nothing about size, age or use.

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